The Self-Educated Toilet Woman

Framed skylight with the interior panelling completed, outlet is for the marine light for the loft bed.

Wow. I've never been so involved with toilets as I am today. I mean, yuck, right? Poop, pee, excrement, faeces, urine, voiding and other more unseemly words. "Little Things" and "Big Things" as they were called by my ladylike mother in the house I grew up in, shortened to "Lickuns" and "Bickuns" by my brothers, who in that manner peculiar to miniature males, found speculating on what exactly a visitor performed in our bathroom a matter of thigh-slapping, snorting and falling-down-helpless hilarity. One even went so far as to take penny bets as to - ahem - outcomes.

It was extremely challenging to be even remotely feminine in that house of testosterone and it was mostly a case of join 'em. But I did draw the line at guessing or betting at the specifics of bathroom excretions of aunts and uncles and other assorteds.

There is a point to this post. Yeah. Gordon-the-Gift had sent me trotting around to investigate composting toilets. There is very little on line in the way of information on these, as pertaining to Newfoundland anyway: unheard of devices. There are none on the island, I've been told. What most people do with an "An Teachín" such as mine, is sneak in an old oil tank underneath the house as a catchment type of system and then don't tell anybody. Meaning the authorities or Environment Canada or local municipalities. And they always get away with it, I was informed, so what is this nonsense about composting toilets, hardy-har-har, when you could dig in an old oil tank and use that as a sorta septic system.

For a minute or two I was swayed there. Yeah, no one would know. But I would. And the town council trusts me to do what I promised on the permit. And seriously, you're either all green and enviro-tree-huggy or this po-faced hypocrite getting away with some nasty behaviour and all that shouting about groundwater and leakage and seepage you did would be just another emperor wearing no clothes.

So I tackled the problem head(sorry)on and went to the manager of Home Depot and asked for help. And guess what, they were bloody wonderful and we all talked to the manufacturer down in in the USA, and found out all there is to know about composting toilets, which are odour-free with a tank that sits underneath the cabin with an outside hand crank you turn every day - to mix her up goodlike - and an airvent that brings in the air to activate the bacteria that does the job and it all condenses down to a drawer that eventually fills up with powder-like compost for the garden.

There was a special discounted web price on the toilet plus shipping, and the HD people dropped 15% off this price and there was no shipping charge on top of this and it will be here in three weeks

It's still pretty expensive - for Thomas Crapper's big invention.


I never, ever, get over the view from the covered deck of An Teachín.